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How to Unbrick a Lumia 520 in Dead Black Screen or Red Screen Bug

1. Download and Install Windows Phone Recovery Tool (now Windows Device Recovery Tool).
(No need if you have already installed it.) Note: this is for the Lumia 520 only as the downloadable hex file is only intended for this phone model. Proceed at your own risk. There's no harm in trying. For Red Screen Bug, proceed to
Step 15 (Check second line of Step 6 and
7 as a prerequisite to 15).

Update 12/29/2015: In Red Screen you also use WDRT if it can detect your phone. Thanks to
Sanket RJ Dave for the tip.

2. Install the following drivers just to be sure. Some of them might have already been installed with WPRT. Just cancel the installation if it’s already there. Download
here.

3. If you’ve downgraded your Lumia using WPRT before it got bricked, the ffu file is already there. This is the phone installer that you need. To locate it, hit
Windows Key + E then, click This PC on the navigation pane and go to
C drive [mine is ACER (C:)].

4. Click View Tab then tick Hidden Items and go to
ProgramData\Microsoft\Packages\Products\rm-914 and you will see the ffu file that’s more than 1 GB in file size.

5. Now, let’s create a new folder in C drive and let’s name it
dump.

6. Download the hex file here (520 only)and place it in the
dump folder. Next, we are going to locate the folder where WPRT is installed. Go to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Care Suite\Windows Phone Recovery Tool. Scroll down to check for
thor2 as this will be needed to create 2 gpt files.

Update 12/29/2015: Download the
complete hex files here and try to experiment to find the right one for your phone model (specifically Nokia only).

7. In that same folder click the File tab, then open
Command Prompt as an administrator.

9. Change the string name in italics using your own
ffu filename in Step 4. Right-click on the ffu file, click
Rename, hit Ctrl + A, Ctrl + C, then paste it after
rm-914\ in the Command Prompt. Hit Enter and it will generate two
gpt files in the dump folder.

10. Connect your phone to your computer using the included micro USB. In the system tray, it should be detected as
QHSUSB_DLOAD.

12. Wait for the process to finish (this will show up in the command prompt:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Care Suite\Windows Phone Recovery Tool> once it’s finished) Do not close
Command Prompt window.

13. On your phone, hold Volume Down + Power and your phone should vibrate. It will boot in
Red Screen. Don’t worry. That’s okay because right now you have a live phone!

14. The Black Screen thing can drain your phone’s battery in a day and it will not charge in that mode. Charge your phone for at least 1 hour because it requires a lot of battery juice when flashing the phone. Or if you
have a spare Nokia 5230, you can charge the battery there since they both have the same battery type. (It’s okay to remove the battery in your Lumia phone in
Red Screen.)

15. After charging, return the battery and connect the phone’s USB to your computer. Go back to
Command Prompt and enter the following: thor2 -mode uefiflash -ffufile "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Packages\Products\rm-914\RM914_3058.50000.1425.0007_RETAIL_apac_philippines_338_07_441237_prd_signed.ffu"replacing the italicized text with your own ffu filename (see
Step 4). The phone will begin flashing, wait until it successfully reaches 100%. If it fails, just remove the battery and repeat
step 15.

16. Your phone will restart and should now boot in
Green Screen.

17. Lastly, enter the command line: thor2 -mode rnd –bootnormalmode. If you get it right, you will get these last two lines in CMD:

Device is already in the normal mode. (NCSd running)

Exited with success

Your phone will reboot with the Nokia logo and it won't take long before you are directed to the Welcome screen.

PS: Thanks to all Windows Insiders who posted random solutions! It took me time to digest it all but now, I fully understand. Please forgive me if some of my terminologies are terrible or wrong. That's how I understand it and I've simplified it for
you. I'm just a plain teacher and not an IT expert. ;)

After over one month of being stuck in red screen, my phone ( Lumia 525 ) finally booted....I'm now setting it up. YAY!!

On previous message, you can see flashing got stuck at 93%....i tried again and that time it got stuck at 96%....tried again and then it booted to green screen!

I would never have tried this again if you haven't mentioned me on that twitter post....Thanks a lot..may God bless you :)

You're welcome! Mine even got stuck at 99% and failed on my first attempt and it went smoothly through 100% on the second one. Others reported that it stagger at 10, 20, 30 and so on till it reached 100. ;)